ChaseDream

标题: 【揽瓜阁2.0】Day9 2020.06.23【自然科学-环境】 [打印本页]

作者: 妥妥 时间: 2020-6-22 20:26
标题: 【揽瓜阁2.0】Day9 2020.06.23【自然科学-环境】

揽瓜阁俱乐部第二期

Day9 2020.06.23

【自然科学-环境】

Asia’s hunger for sand is harmful to farming and the environment

（854字精读必做篇）

The miners usually prefer to work under cover of darkness. This dredger is more brazen. It is not yet sunset when the boat’s crew begin hoovering sand up from the riverbed and pumping it onto a nearby bank, where it will be collected and sold. At least seven barges are doing the same thing on this stretch of the Red River, about an hour’s drive from Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Such teams often work without the right permits, but the rewards outweigh the risk. Whereas the average Vietnamese makes $269 a month, miners can earn between $700 and $1,000 for every boatload they scoop up. The teams working here have deposited so much sand on the bank that dunes have formed.

There has probably never been a better time to be in the sand business. The world uses nearly 50bn tonnes of sand and gravel a year—almost twice as much as a decade ago. No other natural resource is extracted and traded on such an epic scale, bar water.

Demand is greatest in Asia, where cities are growing fast (sand is the biggest ingredient in concrete, asphalt and glass). China got through more cement between 2011 and 2013 than America did in the entire 20th century (the use of cement is highly correlated with that of sand). Since the 1960s Singapore—the world’s largest importer of sand—has expanded its territory by almost a quarter, mainly by dumping it into the sea. The OECD thinks the construction industry’s demand for sand and gravel will double over the next 40 years. Little wonder then that the price of sand is rocketing. In Vietnam in 2017 it quadrupled in just one year.

In the popular imagination, sand is synonymous with limitlessness. In reality it is a scarce commodity, for which builders are now scrabbling. Not just any old grains will do. The United Arab Emirates is carpeted in dunes, but imports sand nonetheless because the kind buffeted by desert winds is too fine to be made into cement. Sand shaped by water is coarser and so binds better. Extraction from coastlines and rivers is therefore surging. But according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Asians are scooping up sand faster than it can naturally replenish itself. In Indonesia some two dozen small islands have vanished since 2005. Vietnam expects to run out of sand this year.

All this has an environmental cost. Removing sand from riverbeds deprives fish of places to live, feed and spawn. It is thought to have contributed to the extinction of the Yangzi river dolphin. Moreover, according to WWF, a conservation group, as much as 90% of the sediment that once flowed through the Mekong, Yangzi and Ganges rivers is trapped behind dams or purloined by miners, thereby robbing their deltas both of the nutrients that make them fecund and of the replenishment that counters coastal erosion. As sea levels rise with climate change, saltwater is surging up rivers in Australia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, among other places, and crop yields are falling in the areas affected. Vietnam’s agriculture ministry has warned that seawater may travel as far as 110km up the Mekong this winter. The last time that happened, in 2016, 1,600 square kilometres of land were ruined, resulting in losses of $237m. Locals have already reported seeing dead fish floating on the water.

Nguyen Van Thoan, a farmer whose pomelo orchard lies not far downstream from the barges scouring the Red River, says that 30 years ago a kilometre of land stood between his house and the river. Today only 20 metres separates them. He blames sand-miners. So do the 6,000 fishermen who have had to abandon their coastal villages in the Indian state of Kerala in recent years, after extraction and erosion left them vulnerable to flooding.

Curbing sand-mining is difficult because so much of it is unregulated. Only about two-fifths of the sand extracted worldwide every year is thought to be traded legally, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. In Shanghai miners on the Yangzi evade the authorities by hacking transponders, which broadcast the positions of ships, and cloning their co-ordinates. It is preferable, of course, to co-opt officials. Ministers in several state governments in India have been accused of abetting or protecting illegal sand-mining. “Everybody has their finger in the pie,” says Sumaira Abdulali of Awaaz Foundation, a charity in Mumbai. She says she has been attacked twice for her efforts to stop the diggers.

Ms Abdulali is nonetheless “a bit hopeful”. Scientists are experimenting with alternatives to concrete and cement. Architects are trying to find ways to use such materials more sparingly. Even the odd government is taking action. In 2018, Maharashtra passed regulations requiring contractors to use plastic waste as filler when building or repairing roads. Singapore is creating a new patch of land by draining it of water rather than piling it with sand. Kiran Pereira of SandStories.org, which promotes awareness of the issue, says “there are plenty of solutions” if only governments would find the will to implement them. Time to pull heads from the sand.

Source: The Economist

【自然科学-环境】

Stiffer Roads Could Drive Down Carbon Emissions

（327字 2分16秒精听必做篇）

先做精听再核对原文哦~

[attach]250646[/attach]

When you walk on a sandy beach, it takes more energy than striding down a sidewalk—because the weight of your body pushes into the sand. Turns out, the same thing is true for vehicles, driving on roads.

"The weight of vehicles creates a very shallow indentation or deflection in the pavement. And makes it such that it's continuously driving up a very shallow hill."

Jeremy Gregory, a sustainability scientist at MIT. His team modeled how much energy could be saved—and greenhouse gases avoided—by simply hardening the nation's roads and highways.

And they found that stiffening 10 percent of the nation's roads every year could prevent 440 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions over the next five decades—enough to offset half a percent of projected transportation sector emissions over that same time period.

To put those emissions savings into context—that amount is equivalent to how much CO2 you'd spare the planet by keeping a billion barrels of oil in the ground. Or by growing seven billion trees, for a decade.

The results are in the Transportation Research Record.

As for how to stiffen roads? Gregory says you could mix small amounts of synthetic fibers or carbon nanotubes into paving materials. Or you could pave with cement-based concrete, which is stiffer than asphalt. (It's worth noting the research was funded in part by the Portland Cement Association.)

This system could also be a way to shave carbon emissions without some of the usual hurdles.

"Usually when it comes to reducing emissions in the transportation sector, you're talking about changing policies related to vehicles and also driver behavior, which involves millions and millions of people. As opposed to changing the way we design or maintain of our pavements. That's just on the order of thousands of people who are working in transportation agencies."

And when it comes to retrofitting our streets and highways—those agencies are where you might say the rubber meets the road.

Source: Scientific American

【笔记格式要求】

精读笔记格式要求：

1.总结文章中心大意

2.总结分论点或每段段落大意

3.摘抄印象深刻或者觉得优美的句子

4.总结文章中的生词

5.记录阅读时间、总结时间、总时间

精听笔记格式要求：

1.逐句听写整篇文章

2.对照原文修改听写稿，标记出错原因

3.总结文章中心大意

4.总结精听过程中的生词

5.记录听写时间、总结时间、总时间

这里也给大家两点学习小建议哦~

精读：如遇到读不懂的复杂句，建议找出句子主干，分析句子成分，也可以尝试翻译句子来帮助理解~

精听：建议每句不要反复纠结听，如果听 5 遍都没听出来，那就跳过，等完成后再回听总结原因，时间宝贵，不要过于执着哦~

作者: 妥妥 时间: 2020-6-22 20:26

揽瓜阁俱乐部，自「language」一词谐音而来，是一个为帮助大家提升英语语言能力而建立的学习小团队。在这里，我们将定时发布涵盖各类话题的外刊语料，供大家练习精听、精读。同时还设置了严格的打卡机制，督促大家克服懒惰坚持学习。

同时我们也招募volunteer协助维护团队，确保学习活动顺利开展~大家一起营造积极向上的学习氛围~

想要提升英语能力的小伙伴，快快添加微信（theTOEFL）报名加入吧，让妥妥带你观尽天下新鲜事，览遍四海热议瓜～

如果你想加入，可以直接在本帖下完成你的学习笔记！如果想进入学习群聊，请直接联系妥妥。

作者: 龙驾马 时间: 2020-6-22 22:03
阅读笔记

中心大意

亚洲高速发展的城市规模，导致了对水泥原料——沙子的巨大需求。而采砂泛滥又给当地造成了大量环境问题。面对限制采砂执行难的情况，科学家也在努力试图找到沙子的替代品。

段落大意

第一段：越南首都河内附近，很多无证采砂船趁着夜色掩护在抓紧挖砂。

第二段：由于目前全世界的沙石用量增加到了十年前的两倍，采砂业的发展也进入到了黄金期。

第三段：在亚洲国家，迅速增长的城市需要大量水泥，而对水泥的主要成分之一沙子的需求也变得空前强烈。

第四段：沙子看上去是无限的，但沙漠中的沙子无法用来制作水泥，只有海岸线与河流中的沙子才是理想的建筑原料。

第五段：东南亚地区规模空前的采砂行为，也造成了当地水土资源被破坏，环境问题加剧。

第六段：很多农民的农地，果园，正在面临着泛滥河水的威胁。

第七段：限制采砂在实际情况中很难被真正执行。

第八段：科学家们正在研究新的建筑材料，找到沙子的合适替代品。
句子摘抄：

There has probably never been a better time to be in the sand business.

China got through more cement between 2011 and 2013 than America did in the entire 20th century (the use of cement is highly correlated with that of sand).

In reality it is a scarce commodity, for which builders are now scrabbling.

Time to pull heads from the sand.

生词摘抄：

replenish vt. 补充，再装满；把…装满；给…添加燃料
synonymous adj. 同义的；同义词的
scrabble v.（忙乱地）扒寻，摸索；

阅读时间 9分钟总结时间32分钟总计 41分钟

听力笔记

[attach]250805[/attach][attach]250806[/attach]

文章大意：

麻省理工的可持续科学家们正在研究对道路进行加固和改进，尽可能减少车辆造成的路面凹陷，已使得车辆在通过凹陷时的能量消耗与碳排放降低。

生词摘抄：

sustainability n.持续性
stiffen v.使变硬
megaton n.兆
nanotube n.纳米管
asphalt n.沥青
听写时间：28分钟总结时间 30分钟共计 58分钟

作者: 嬛嬛浅笑梨涡 时间: 2020-6-23 11:11
Day9打卡

[attach]250803[/attach]

作者: Dovis 时间: 2020-6-23 11:27

揽瓜阁 Day 9

Dovis 2020 6 23

精读 Asia’s hunger for sand is harmful to farming and the environment

一文章大意

全球城镇化的发展引起了沙子需求的飞涨，各国非法开采层出不穷，价格高昂的同时也给生态环境带来了巨大影响。目前科学家/建筑师甚至各国政府陆续采取手段，以期能减少沙土需求。

二段落总结

在越南河内，很多矿工船员等在没有许可的情况下肆无忌惮地下河淘沙公开出售，以获取比人均收入更高的收益。
全球对沙子的需求量是十年前的两倍，这也催生了沙子生意的兴起——没有哪一类自然资源的开采交易增长如此之高了。
亚洲由于城镇化发展迅速，对沙子的需求量最大。中国2011-2013年的水泥需求超过了美国整个20世纪；新加坡填海造陆。以上种种让OECD预测接下来沙子的需求增加一倍价格飞涨。
沙子并不像人类想象那样取之不尽用之不竭。事实上，它是一种稀少的物品。沙子使用速度超过再生速度，已经使得一些河流海岸逐渐萎缩。
这也导致了另外的环境问题。其一是破坏了鱼类的栖息繁殖环境，致使鱼类灭绝；其二是导致海平线上升海水倒灌使得农作物减产。
某住在红河下游的农民称，30年前河流和他房屋之间尚有1000米的土地间隔，如今只有20米了。他和被迫从沿海村庄迁徙的渔民一样，指责是因矿工的开采挖掘使得洪水易发。
限制采沙非常困难，因为其中很多都是不受监管的。矿工通过各种手段逃避当局，甚至非法开采每个环节的人都参与其中。
科学家们正在尝试使用其他材料来代替水泥和混凝土。建筑师甚至各国政府也出台各种措施来减少建筑沙子的需求。如果各国都有此决心实施的话，是时候所有人要正视这一问题了。

三生词摘录

dredger 挖泥船; 疏浚船; 挖泥机

brazen 厚颜无耻的; 黄铜制的; 黄铜色的

hoover 用真空吸尘器清扫(地毯、地板等);

barge 驳船(运河、河流上运载客货的大型平底船)

gravel 沙砾; 砾石; 石子

synonymous 同义的; 等同于…的

Scrabble 忙乱地找; 翻找; 乱抓; 乱动

coarse 粗糙的; 粗织的; 粗的; 大颗粒的; 粗鲁无礼的，粗俗的(尤指涉及性的);

scoop up 敏捷地抱起，拿起，捡起

purloin 偷窃; 擅自使用

fecund 生殖力旺盛的; 多产的; 有发明创造力的; (尤指) 能提出新颖想法的

replenishment 补充; 充满

erosion (河流、气候等的) 侵蚀，腐蚀; (权威、权利、信心等的) 逐渐丧失，削弱; (支持的) 减少; (价值的) 降低; (货币的) 贬值

pomelo orchard 柚子果园

Curb 控制，抑制，限定，约束

evade 逃脱; 躲开; 躲避; 逃避，规避(尤指法律或道德责任); 回避，避开(处理或谈论某事);

abet 教唆

sparingly 很少; 细嚼慢咽地; 节俭地

四句子摘抄

It is not yet sunset when the boat’s crew begin hoovering sand up from the riverbed and pumping it onto a nearby bank, where it will be collected and sold.

So do the 6,000 fishermen who have had to abandon their coastal villages in the Indian state of Kerala in recent years, after extraction and erosion left them vulnerable to flooding.

五用时记录

通读 6.7min 总结41min 共计51min

作者: N0ire 时间: 2020-6-23 11:55
D9

作者: lucin 时间: 2020-6-23 14:15
Day9

作者: 木辛青 时间: 2020-6-23 15:16
打卡卡

作者: MJ-MJ 时间: 2020-6-23 17:09
MJ-MJ[attach]250817[/attach][attach]250816[/attach]

作者: ppxstar 时间: 2020-6-23 17:43
打卡又是单词量挂机的一天

作者: 大白酱ann 时间: 2020-6-23 17:51
Day9

作者: Garfieldsu 时间: 2020-6-23 18:18
day 9 打卡

作者: KLYnn 时间: 2020-6-23 19:11
来咯

作者: gamtchong 时间: 2020-6-23 20:41
DAY 9

作者: coloursyan 时间: 2020-6-23 20:58
6.23

作者: llzzzzzy 时间: 2020-6-23 21:20
llzzzzzy day9 打卡

作者: 啊哒 时间: 2020-6-23 21:30
打卡

作者: 项斐 时间: 2020-6-23 21:42
D9

作者: YLEmily 时间: 2020-6-23 21:47
DAY 9

作者: Carlisler 时间: 2020-6-23 21:50
Day 9
[attach]250838[/attach][attach]250841[/attach][attach]250839[/attach][attach]250840[/attach]

作者: ANDREWORTH 时间: 2020-6-23 21:54
D9

作者: cgvmc 时间: 2020-6-23 21:56
DAY9

作者: 干掉他没商量 时间: 2020-6-23 21:56
[attach]250843[/attach]
Day 9
干掉他没商量

作者: はな 时间: 2020-6-23 21:59
day9 打卡

作者: ling0602 时间: 2020-6-23 22:03
DAY 9

作者: 青果_lw 时间: 2020-6-23 22:12
Day 9[attach]250851[/attach]

作者: wanglu1994143 时间: 2020-6-24 00:49
打卡

作者: Dovis 时间: 2020-6-24 11:57
精听
文章大意
MIT的可持续研究科学家们发现，车辆的重量会在人行道上产生非常浅的凹陷或偏斜，以至于造成额外的能量消耗和碳排放。研究者们正在研究如何对道路进行加固来减少碳排放。除此之外交通方面的节能减排，还要考虑变更车辆政策和规范驾驶行为。
生词摘录
stride down 大步走下去
indentation缺口; 凹陷; 凹痕; 行首缩进; 行首空格; 造成凹陷(或缺口)
deflection (尤指击中某物后) 突然转向，偏斜，
megaton 百万吨级(爆炸能量计量单位，相当于一百万吨黄色炸药的威力)
nanotube 碳纳米管
asphalt 沥青; 柏油
Retrofit 给机器设备装配(新部件); 翻新; 改型;
用时记录
听力 5min 听写31min 共计44min

作者: SereneG76 时间: 2020-6-24 21:20
[attach]250884[/attach]

作者: 青果_lw 时间: 2020-6-26 17:55
Day 9 补打卡

作者: 904 时间: 2020-6-29 16:17
Day9

欢迎光临 ChaseDream (https://forum.chasedream.com/)